Saturday, January 10, 2015

No religion owns me

Given the hateful atmosphere, now is the best time to don the hat of - "i do not belong to any religion" or "no religion owns me".
With this you are on safe ground, for the time being at least.
You are like the neutral oasis of Switzerland in the religious world war.

For if you are bound to any religion, with it comes the automatic denunciation and intolerance of other religions. With it comes a heightened sense of sensitivity to any syllable spoken about your religion. Being A Hindu, or a Muslim or a Christian means the ability and willingness to defend, even the most ridiculous of practices, the wholehearted agreement to forget humanity in the pursuit of becoming warriors for your religion, fighting for something that you may not understand completely in the first place!
But you only know it has to be defended, whatever be the cost.
It means being rigid and uncompromising, belittling anything that does not conform to your practices and beliefs. Being religious, today, means being strong, strong and angry in the face of any criticism thrown your way, being serious and throwing out our sense of humor, the one aspect that makes us human. The inability to provide benefit of doubt and the thorough confidence that the other religion was borne just to mock your own.
Religion today means curbing logical thinking and restricting expression. It means living in constant fear that a rational human being with a swish of his pen on the paper will be able to obliterate my religion, that has been passed down generations, for centuries. All in seconds with a flick of a pen.

I cannot be a part of such a feeble institution.

Religion is one aspect of a multi-dimensional human being. In fact, religion should be a very private and personal aspect of any human being. It is what dictates a person's actions and motives and from deep within. Why would you want to announce your religion to the world? Worse still, why would you want everyone around you to share the same deep well of inner peace and happiness. Isn't that something unique? Something that only you and your God should know?
Religion is like wearing an underwear - it is best if you have it to support yourself, but would you really want to go flashing about your support system in public? Making yourself vulnerable to cruel attacks and jokes? And will one size fit all? No! Wouldn't you customize it as per your size and taste? Then why the logic that something as indefinable and intangible as God and inner peace will be found by all by practicing only the one "true" religion? How will one religion fit millions of people?
Worse still, would you want to know what kind of underwear your neighbor was wearing and if it matched yours? And if it did match yours, would that make you happy?!

Religion is supposed to make life simpler, to make living hopeful. Not to ruin and kill lives.

Religion was borne out of a need to bound communities together, to have a common thread running through a system so that people helped one another. Worshiping uncertain natural elements was a way of conquering fear and showing unity in the face of uncertainty. Religion brought a sense of order to civilization, it put some external limitations in place within which a community could prosper.
What it did not account for was the fact that not everyone wants to be held in the same place by a same set of beliefs.
Something that defines, can also restrict. And anything that restricts is to be overcome.
Right now people in power want to restrict, to curb anything that might upset the balance of power, but rebellion is an inevitable consequence of restriction.
Divisive policies work for only so long, majority of humans cannot bring themselves to kill other humans, it is the minority that we abhor and the media covers, because it is shocking.

I was borne a Hindu, but i am not one.

For to be Hindu today means i have to hate Muslims and Christians and Jews and mock their theories of God. I cannot make fun of deep beliefs of people and their ideas of God. I respect them, just as i expect them to respect my views. I cannot target people because they do not follow my religion, or because they laugh at some of the seriously ridiculous things in my religion.
I refuse to be acknowledged based on what i believe in and what i do not. I cannot let religion be a distinguishing line for categorizing people.